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Interview with
LIAM
from
WINDWAKER

(16th March 2024)

Interview with Dave Bruce

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About WINDWAKER

Windwaker examine the aftershocks of love and the changes made in its wake over a soundtrack tilt-a-whirling from moments of insane heaviness to heavenly release. Bubbling up out of Melbourne, Victoria, the Australian quintet— Liam Guinane [vocals], Jesse Crofts [guitar], Indey Salvestro [bass], Chris Lalic [drums, programming], and Connor Robins [synths and samples] —first landed in 2017. They built a growing fan base with independent EPs such as Fade [2017] and Empire [2019]. The latter boasted “Colourless” and “My Empire,” which each cracked over 1m Spotify streams. In between selling out headline tours, they joined Beartooth on the road, while I Prevail tapped them for an upcoming 2022 run across Australia with Motionless In White. Along the way, they inked a deal with Fearless Records and wrote, produced, and engineered their full-length debut Love Language by themselves over the course of 2021. After amassing millions of streams independently and building buzz around the world, the band deliver an unpredictable and undeniable exploration of love across 12 tracks. Guitarist Guinane returned to the fold  —but is now installed in the role of vocalist — after the release of Love Language, while Robins was added to the lineup. With the new-ish members in place and praise from Distorted Sound, Hysteria, New Noise, Sonic Perspectives, and MXDWN, Windwaker are ready to take the next leap forward.

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D: Alright brother, let’s get going.
L: Let’s rip it Dave.

D: How did the band come together eight years ago?
L: The band started in a town called Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. And it was started by five friends that had sort of made their name around town and decided to move down to Melbourne. That is when I first met them. And they were headlining a Halloween show. And I just got chatting with Will, the old vocalist, or the original vocalist, I should say, and Chris, the drummer. And I was sitting there, watching them and thinking to myself, wow, it’d be really fun to play in a band like this. And two days later, their lead guitarist had left the band and I got given an audition. And yeah, from there, we just basically hustled and tried to take any touring opportunities that we possibly could have. We capitalized a lot on our regional connection being tied to Wagga Wagga and Albury. Those were the two regional towns that I played my first shows with Wind Waker about eight years ago. And then time had passed. I had started a new project and I wanted to spend some time focusing on that. This was just after our first or second proper release, Empire came out in 2019. And that one, that was sort of our turning point for us is when sort of people in the industry and the J’s and that sort of stuff started noticing us a little bit more. And we were able, we got our first song over a million streams on Spotify. It was Colourless, which was not even a single, like a single on that EP. It was just a song that just seemed to translate to an overseas audience and gathered a lot of streams and same with My Empire.
As I said, I left the band briefly to focus on another project and the pandemic happened, all that sort of stuff, signing to Fearless Records, releasing a debut album called Love Language. And now I’m here. That September of 2022, they gave me the phone call and said, Hey, uh, Will’s decided to take a step back from the band. Would you consider singing for us. And so they gave me an audition and the rest is history now.

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D: How different are you today versus then re songwriting and perfomance? Has it progressed or is it much the same?
L: I think it’s a bit of both, if I’m being honest with you, Dave, I think it’s natural for us to kind of bend genres and combine a lot of different styles just because individually, all of us listen to such vastly different styles of music. So that part of it is the easy part, but the hard part is making things memorable and exciting and new and fresh. And that in particular has been a focus of ours to take a bit more time to showcase our maturity. I mean we’re damn near 30 now. We were starting this stuff when we were 18 to 20. So we’re a lot more experienced now. The process is a lot more streamlined. We’ve got a method to our madness and it’s now about keeping that progression going now, keeping things exciting, trying new things.

D: How would you describe your sound?
L: I think the term that we’ve landed on at this point is called hyper-pop metal. So hyper-pop being the genre that kind of encapsulates a lot of electronic and pop emo alternative elements, hip hop elements. And then there’s the metal side of it, which is obviously all the screams and the low tune guitars. But yeah, that’s kind of where we landed.

D: Why do you think fans resonate your music. Why do you think you’re popular?
L: I think there is a sense of honesty and authenticity in what we do. I think that there’s something new and exciting, something a bit experimental but also catchy. There’s a pop element to it that’s got broad appeal in that sense. And there’s something for everybody in our music, in my view.

D: Your new ‘Enter The Wall’ has just been released! Describe its origin and evolution. 
L: It was a slow process. We’ve been writing a lot of music over the last 14 months. These were a slew of singles that we wanted to put out in succession and come together and make an EP of, that were somewhat related to a couple of the tracks on the EP. The Wall being one of them. The Wall is the first line of the song, so it felt like a logical answer to our question of what do we call it. I think that answers your question.

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D: What are the signature tracks, and which is your favorite?
L: Well, three of the tracks we haven’t actually played live yet at the time of this recording. At all? We’ll be debuting them all at Knotfest next week. So I guess out of all of them, Sirens is the only one we’ve ever played live so far. So that’s a favorite. And that one, to be honest, no matter how the show was going, no matter if the crowd is being unresponsive, that is the turning point in our set. It always comes. That’s a keeper.

D: Knotfest is coming up next week? What are you looking forward to, and what can the fans expect?
L: The fans can expect all four of those new tracks on the EP to be played. It’s a very high energy set. We’ve managed to squeeze eight songs into our short set time. So we’re just going to rip it. We’re just going to go for it. I’m looking forward to seeing just the wide variety of bands that I’ve been following for so long. There are a lot of nostalgic bands I’m attached to.

D: Have you played it before?
L: I’ve never played Knotfest before. We’ve played quite a few music festivals in the past, but not any one that we’ve gotten to play on the main stage, not first. So it’s very exciting.

D: Always a massive lineup. Who are you looking forward to see most?
L: I’m really looking forward to seeing Lamb of God for the first time. They were my entrance to heavy, screamed based music. I love their music all the way back up until Black Label. So yeah, really looking forward to them. Hoping to catch Speed, although they are on immediately after we finish our set. So quick pack down and run around the back of the stage to get to the crowd. I’ll throw Skindred out there. Skindred are a very nostalgic band for me that are a lot of fun. So I’m looking forward to seeing them too.

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D: If you could perform with any music artist alive or dead, who would you choose and why?
L: For me personally, I’m going to capitalise on the alive or dead part of that. And I’m going to say Jeff Buckley. I feel like that would just be a very rare experience and he has such a beautiful voice. And he’s been such an inspiration for me throughout my whole life. Let’s throw him out there.

D: What are your long-term aspirations as a music artist and how are you progressing towards them?
L: Long term we’d love to be living off our art and getting to tour the world breaking out of that Australian touring circuit. I’d love for our music to appear in things like video games. I feel like that’s a very functional thing.

D: Talking to a lot of touring bands, it’s harder to make a living touring these days, even the guys that are out there 30, 40 years.
L: Yeah, it’s more expensive than ever to tour. And we’re finding that out with how we’re planning the rest of the year. Just the money side of it is it’s crazy how much it costs to tour.

D: With that in mind, what piece of advice would you give to an artist starting out? 
L: Early on define what success is for you. Because success is a very subjective thing. And for some bands that is living off your music or for some bands it’s just being recognised by maybe a certain artist or something like that. So having a clear definition of what success is for you and what that path looks like and making that path for yourself. What are you going to do to achieve those goals? How are you going to get there?

D: What is the best thing about performing to a live audience? What’s been the career highlight so far?
L: I feel like there’s a symbiotic energy. I mean, I’m talking very airy-fairy here, but music is magic in my beliefs, it’s vibrations and all. It obviously resonates with people, not just physically, but emotionally. And there’s a connection that’s made there that can’t be replicated.

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D: Are you scared at Knotfest that the audience are going to be looking for all the major bands and not notice when Wind Waker comes on?
L: I’m looking forward to creating a first impression for a lot of people. We’re gonna rip into a few quickies and make sure we get noticed.

D: How about we end on some quick questions with some quick answers? Here are three to start with. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?
L: Eat a two to three person barbecue platter a couple hours before a set. Insanity.

D: That’s ridiculous.
L: Yeah, it was not a good idea.

D: What’s the one topic you can talk about for hours?
L: I could talk about hip hop history.

D: What’s the one thing you most like about yourself?
L: I think I like my positive outlook and just my general demeanor.

D: Finally, nine questions to find out your favourites. Favourite album?
L: ‘Sound Awake’ by Karnivool.

D: Favourite artist?
L: Let’s go MF Doom. I’ve got the mask on.

D: Favourite movie?
L: In the last year I’ll say ‘They Cloned Tyrone’.

D: Favourite place to visit?
L: I love going to… actually I’ve only been there once now but I’m going say Switzerland, specifically Lucerne. It’s beautiful, it’s fantastic.

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D: Favourite venue to play?
L: The Forum in Melbourne.

D:Yeah, the Forum’s awesome.
L: It’s amazing.

D: Favourite food?
L: Let’s just go Japanese cuisine.

D: Favorite drink?
L: Uh, coffee.
D: Me too.

D: Favorite person in history? You can say me now you know me.
L: Yeah, I’m going to go Dave Bruce.

D: Woo. Join the queue. No, seriously.
L: Let’s go MLK.

D: Favourite tattoo?
L: I’ve only got one and it’s like a lamp post and it has… (shows the tattoo with the word ‘residue’ with the u crossed out). The story behind this is I used to play in another band. Oh, I still play in another band called Reside and we played Unify one year. We won the Unearthed competition. And on all the merchandise, they added a U into our name reside and it spelt residue. So we’ve got it with the U crossed out.

D: We’re done. Thank you for your time today.
L: Thank you, Dave. You are wonderful. Thank you so much.

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AMNPLIFY – DB